This piece was inspired by the play “Silent Sky” about Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Early 2000s

Always a measuring of distance – the gap between her and her peers, a canyon. Her otherness ever apparent in her frizzy hair, the two misleading syllables that begin her name – the spelling is not the pronunciation. Even uniformed in their unfortunate see-through white kits, united by a common goal, she is never really of them. How odd this persistent gap, even with her teammates.

On a team retreat, a secluded cabin tucked among cottonwoods and spindly pines, they seek a togetherness that will make them unbeatable. For brief moments, she is with them, their goal the same – win. Yet, as soon as they step off the field, the homogeneity of their religious system crowds her out, a constant, all-consuming thrum. Like the late summer crickets, their spirituality so pervasive it is almost white noise. 

The oldest on the team now, five of them splinter from the group for a night walk. The blackness swallows them, its utter completeness disconcerting. As her teammates crunch forward on the gravel path, she stops and gazes up. 

And there it is.

The Milky Way.

The smattering of silver dust a belt across the sky, so subtle and so vast her breath pauses in her throat. She is surprised that the others don’t even stop, aren’t somehow changed by this phenomenon. She almost didn’t believe in it, The Milky Way. After all, why bother with something that was, up until this moment, intangible?

Her teammates have noticed her now and match their gazes to hers. One of the team captains walks the few feet back, stands next her and says, “Oh yeah. Amazing, isn’t it?”

Smallness collides against her in a comforting way. 

What is belonging in a place this infinitely vast?

Henrietta

Obscurity would be unfamiliar to her. Well, if only she’d been a man.

The lament is all too familiar. Voraciously intelligent, Henrietta Swan Leavitt graduated from Radcliffe with an expansive education and limited options to apply it. She found employment at the Harvard College Observatory in 1893 as a menial “computer” cataloging the brightness of stars. 

Henrietta was a pernicious astronomer, and as a result of her consistent toil, she discovered a relationship between a star’s brightness cycle and its absolute magnitude. This discovery enabled scientists to bring the distance near, shedding light on the expansive breadth of the universe. Henrietta’s work allowed scientists to calculate a star’s distance from Earth, and male astronomers like Edwin Hubble used it as the backbone of their work.

Henrietta continued to work amongst other female computers in a cramped office, meticulously bookkeeping stars, her work often claimed by her male colleagues.  Undeterred, Henrietta pressed back the edges of the unknown until her death in 1921.*

Early 2020s

Decades later, she has spanned coasts, discovered distance in friendships isn’t always the norm; the horizon from her teen years expanded exponentially. Now, here she is back in the state she thought she’d never return to, this time bolstered by connections of true acceptance and still ever doubtful they can happen here.

Then, there is a cabin again.

A cabin, and a different kind of team now. Former coworkers, a shield of women who indulge in all of the best vices.

Long after the sun sets, they trek away from the cabin, teetering up a rocky slope by feel. November desert chill bites at them, begs them to huddle close on their boulder thrones. She cranes her head back, the moment a delicious gulp of contentment. 

Hello, old friend.

They all watch it, the night sky adorned by the Milky Way. They fall silent, alone together in their awe. Like a gift of the Fates, a giant star streaks through the black, its tail a thick electric blue. They whoop and holler, adrenaline surging as it bursts like a firework, lighting up the sky in a spectacular display.

She considers the space above her, the infinite expanse of stars and the ever shifting distance. Her friend leans in closer, a shiver from the cold folding up both of them.

“Can you believe this?”

She can.

*Information in this paragraph came from an article written by Gael Mariani entitled “Henrietta Leavitt – Celebrating the Forgotten Astronomer” https://www.aavso.org/henrietta-leavitt-%E2%80%93-celebrating-forgotten-astronomer